


Drowning Dream

by megolas



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:07:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megolas/pseuds/megolas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was born in the bottom of a boat <br/>Of glass between the sea and me -- Augie March, The Drowning Dream</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cupiscent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/gifts).



> For Dee, on her birthday.

Jack was born at sea. He was delivered by salt rough hands, his umbilical cord sliced through by a knife normally used for gutting the fish his father caught. The first thing he saw was the sea. Cradled in his mother's arms, they pulled around to return to land.

The sea had him then, with the spray and waves and it would never let him go.

At nine, Jack ran away. Stole a small paring knife from the kitchen, kept it in his boot and hid aboard the first ship he could find. The crew found him a few days later, when they were far out to sea. That was the start of his love affair with the ocean, his home now among the salt-sharp smell of the ropes and sound of the seagulls.

\---

Jack's first taste of rum made him cough, tears filling the corners of his eyes as the alcohol burnt a trail down the back of his throat. The sailors had clapped him on the back and told him it'd put hair on his chest.

His first tattoo was dulled by two bottles of rum and by the time the candle-heated needle pierced his skin, he was six sheets to the wind, sprawled over a barrel and singing a shanty to himself. The salt water stung the raised red rawness of the sun and the sea inked into his arm for days after but the burning, like the rum and the sea, became something Jack craved.

\---

Three years to the day he added his name to the ink in his skin, this time choosing to remain sober. He was small for his age, finding it easy to climb the rigging and fit in the cramped sleeping areas but definitely becoming a man, rather than a boy. The sailors called him Sparrow and said they never understood how he didn't blow off in the wind.

The first whore he slept with had cooed over him and he'd returned to the ship still drunk on the taste of her skin, a bead from her necklace wrapped in his hair.

He collected small items after that, each one specific to him, each one wrapped securely in his braids.

\---

The brand left him with the lingering stench of burnt flesh and hair. It came up in welts and the salt and dirt made it worse. Jack traced it with his fingers in the cramped cell. It was scarred white flesh by the time they escaped.

It was another mark in the history of Jack Sparrow, given to him with compliments by the East Indian Trading Company.

\---

The first time he set foot on The Pearl, it was like coming home in a way he hadn't felt since his first night at sea. The boat seemed to curl up towards him and he rubbed his hands across every piece of her that he could reach, murmuring to her under his breath.

She made him Jack Sparrow. Cemented his reputation and cut through the water after their targets like a shark toward blood.

It hurt Jack in ways that surpassed the physical when she sailed over the horizon without him, Barbossa's hands on her. A single shot nestled against Jack's heart.

\---

Jack added the Sparrow to his arm ten years to the day he ran away. Each stroke of the needle had bound him closer to the sea, the waves, the salt-water taste of cured wood under his skin.

It brought him the horizon, and a compass he'd never be rid of. When he stood on the deck of The Pearl he could feel it soar, wind filling the sails, sea curving away behind them.


End file.
